


keeping up appearances

by Rupzydaisy



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Canon Divergent, Comedy, Gen, and then gets fam-zoned, best enemies, but the master is the oncoming tantrum, spyfall au, the Doctor may be the oncoming storm, the master gets on board the tardis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:16:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27577735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rupzydaisy/pseuds/Rupzydaisy
Summary: The Doctor wrinkles her nose at the lot of them and waves a welcoming hand back at him. “But seriously, you must have wondered how it all happens. A once in a lifetime opportunity, O. Right here, right now...and then, somewhere or anywhere.”It grounds him when she uses his misnomer.He wrings his hands as though he’s unsure of the offer, buries the one final thought commiserating the plans he had set in place that'll now fall, and then takes a tentative step forward. “You’re right! You’re right, that’s the kind of invitation someone would be mad to turn down.”The Master flings his arms out, elbows locked in tight to his ribs, playing the part of a researcher finally allowed into the field, of a penpusher struggling to contain his excitement, and falls into line with the rest of her human companions with nothing apart from the clothes on his back.“Alright!”Or...the Skyfall AU where the Master gets invited on board as O, and decides to go along with it until he can dramatically steal the TARDIS. Only it doesn't work out as planned.
Relationships: The Doctor & The Master (Doctor Who), Thirteenth Doctor & The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 30





	keeping up appearances

**Author's Note:**

> So no plane reveal, the fam still land the plane with O and all of them go on the run to find Barton while the Doctor hops back into time and then back in time for the launch event.

“Come with us, O. Properly this time.” The Doctor says, and the rest look expectantly from inside the TARDIS. The Master finds it hard to argue back even though it means leaving his plans mid-way and his own TARDIS behind. 

But he does know that good-old, sensible O would dither, just a bit, even when the opportunity of a trip in the TARDIS was dangled in his face. So he umms and ahhhh’s and says, “I don’t know. I mean, I’ll be expected to give a debrief to the new C and-” 

“What part of _time_ and _space_ do you not get mate?” Ryan calls back, as if the temptation of risk and danger would be a good enough call for him. 

But it's Graham who takes a few steps towards the door and offers a conciliatory look. “It’s not always like this, with the laser shoes and being on the run...mostly just…some of the time.” 

Beside him, Yasmin somehow cracks a smile under the golden lights, despite only narrowly escaping with her life mere hours ago. If he stares a little longer, he can see it waver around her eyes. “I’d say somewhere between thirty and fifty.” 

“ _Hey!_ I’m working on that. It’s not like I go out looking for trouble.” The Doctor wrinkles her nose at the lot of them and waves a welcoming hand back at him. “But seriously, you must have wondered how it all happens. A once in a lifetime opportunity, O. Right here, right now...and then, somewhere or anywhere.” 

It grounds him when she uses his misnomer.

He wrings his hands as though he’s unsure of the offer, buries the one final thought commiserating the plans he had set in place that'll now fall, and then takes a tentative step forward. “You’re right! You’re right, that’s the kind of invitation someone would be mad to turn down.” 

The Master flings his arms out, elbows locked in tight to his ribs, playing the part of a researcher finally allowed into the field, of a penpusher struggling to contain his excitement, and falls into line with the rest of her human companions with nothing apart from the clothes on his back. 

“Alright!” 

The Doctor whoops as she turns and runs up the ramp, working her way around the console to get the TARDIS into flight. It’s disjointed poetry in motion watching her single-handedly pilot the ship, and when the TARDIS lurches its way into the time vortex he swept up in the giddy feeling for simply being allowed to walk right in through the doors.

* * *

“A pinkie promise is a pinkie promise.” The Doctor declares, brushing her hair off her face as the TARDIS touches down with a wailing grinding of gears and a muted thump. “So Yaz, as promised, the best spa in the Chicox Galaxy. Rest and relaxation galore! We’ll all be floating out of here in two days’ time as though there’s not a single worry in the universe.” 

“Here, Doctor,” Graham squints through his glasses at a printout the TARDIS had supplied. “This Soslandan mud wrap? It’s not going to make me break out into hives or anything?” 

"Not allergic to berries, are you?"

"Then nope!"

Ryan plucks the paper out of his hands to wave it around in the air. “O, you’ve got a back massage and sauna here. Maybe it’ll work out that crick in your neck.” 

The Master blinks dumbly, broken out of the daydream of waiting for the moment that the Doctor would turn around, having put the pieces of his truly diabolical plan together, and he would finally hear her call him by his true name.

But it doesn’t happen.

Instead she peers over the young human's shoulder and reads over the spa's offerings. “I for one, am going to get a head massage and then a haircut. I was thinking about switching up the colour, you know I’ve _always_ wanted to be ginger.” 

“Ginger?” Yasmin’s snort is loud, and then she quickly rearranges her expression. “Seriously?” 

“Out of all the things you could choose…” The Master muses quietly as they file out of the TARDIS. 

He hangs back while the others speed off and watches the Doctor take out her sonic screwdriver and deadlock the doors which ruined his rather flashy _Plan A_ : _stealing her TARDIS from right under her nose_. 

“Ginger, yeah I know, but it’s the simple things I’ve come to appreciate after all this time. It’s hard to explain to a human.” She answers his unasked question as they walk down towards the reception desk while the others race off to the top list treatments they’d marked out over breakfast. “After all these centuries, it’s a silly little something I can still hope for.”

“I may understand more than you think.” The Master sticks his hands in the pockets of his khaki trousers and feels a prickle on the back of his neck from the way she stares at him. 

_Come on, Doctor, read between the pixels._

She blinks. 

He does too.

“You know, from all the reading I’ve done on you.” 

The moment passes, the thrill of being caught fades away as she nods and sighs back wistfully. “Being ginger. Although, I guess Yaz is right, I don’t think it would suit this face so much...But it could do with a seaweed slime wrap, you coming?” 

* * *

They'd gone and gotten caught up in trouble.

Again.

It would have been laughable because it was happening as the planet was experiencing mild earthquakes too, only he had ended up on the wrong side of the door where the lock had buckled and was now facing the unglamorous view of staring down the barrel of a gun. 

_Not funny._

"Come on, we need to-" Ryan freezes, coming to the same realisation that there was nowhere to go. 

The Master runs all the possibilities in his head. He _could_ leave the human there, to a quick end, and return to the TARDIS with a morose, grime-streaked face and tell them there was simply nothing he could have done. 

_Liar. The Master isn’t trapped._

But then there was that little, very unwelcome, voice at the back of his thoughts which told him, _oh she would have other questions about it all, wouldn't she?_

She would. 

Yet, the Master doesn’t duck for cover or begin screaming. Instead, he chooses to slam his elbow into the nose of the guard and with his free hand takes the blaster off his belt and fires. While the shot misses the target as another earthquake hits, landing a scorching hole into the man’s leg rather than his chest, it still has the same effect. Their path out is cleared. 

And he can feel Ryan staring and staring and staring. 

_Ugh._

"Run!" The Master yells, letting O's fear and concern wash over him, while yanking the human back the way they had come from. 

Afterwards, he finds himself having to explain it away, and what grates him most of all is the mild-mannered tone he has to use. “They make all MI6 employees undergo basic training, and you don’t get to pass the physical unless you can shoot straight-ish. I always hated the early mornings.”

Ryan lets it pass, patting him on the back in relief. “Handy, I guess I can’t complain. Thanks mate.”

“You’re welcome.”

The words leave a sour taste in his mouth, but there's no time to linger when the others are waiting for them. 

* * *

Plans G-S fold in on themselves like a pack of cards being shuffled.

Plan W heads for a watery grave as soon as they touch down on a small planet in the Kalvorian system when the _whole fam_ outvote the Doctor to go surfing rather than Barcelona where he could have hired a cheap distraction to have them chase after. 

It is all massively inconvenient. Especially since it was looking more and more likely that he’d have to move onto the Galifreyan alphabet for naming his future plans. 

His mind whirs with these new machinations as he circles back in the corridors and heads to the console room. There the Doctor stands, gazing at nothing with a particular and brooding hard. The stillness in her exudes outwards until it's a tangible barrier, holding her inwards and keeping him out. 

Until the Master's footsteps stamp a little too hard against the metal flooring and she notices him there. Quick a flash, she slaps a broad smile on her face. "Oh hey, didn't see you there."

"You seem like you could do with a friendly ear?" 

It takes a bit more effort this time to shove himself back into the human-box, blink placidly and then smile enthusiastically. But she's slower too, lost in her own thoughts with her guard down, _once again_. It would be so easy to wrestle control of her little ship from her. But he knows not to rush it; he's underestimated her before and lived to regret it.

The Master leans on the railing, digging his forearms against the metal and asks outright, “Does it help?” 

“What?”

“You fly across the universe and... _time,_ and you cause terrible, awesome things. You have names, Doctor, I’ve read your file, I’ve heard stories of aliens who landed on Earth or fled from other places. I’ve read those old immigration interviews too. They carried your name as they ran, those tales of your legend, along with them; _the Doctor came to town, and caused_ _absolute_ _havoc_.” 

He could hear her softly breathing, refusing to look up, but it doesn't stop him. Never has.

“You upset things, break things, take advantage of softness in the timelines and wrap them in knots to suit a morality you chose, one beyond everyone else’s.” 

With his hearts beating faster, he pauses, just to let it sink in. Then he smiles softly, like an old friend would, like _O the human_ would. All harmless and toothless, with a touch of concern sunk into the wrinkles around his eyes. 

“Does it help to smile once it’s all over, even with the weight of your guilt on your shoulders?”

She lifts her head to suck in a deep breath, exhales long and loud, and for a moment he thinks she might yell at him.

_That would be a surprise._

Only, she doesn't.

The smile she returns, soft and sad, and he thinks she might cry instead. "I try to help. That's all I want to do, all I can do, after everything that's happened. Just help."

* * *

Of all the things that he had managed to settle into in his new routine of living aboard the TARDIS with the Doctor and her strays, there was one thing the Master desperately needed to flip a table on. 

He had a fairly good handle on his temper while masquerading as O. 

His manners were impeccable, a softly spoken horizon-watching researcher who could converse with any three of the humans on board on whatever inane topic they chose. 

On top of that, he could deceive the most suspicious of minds, so running along with this rag-tag group of humans from Earth and gaining their trust was like taking pick and mix from the hands of an easily distracted child. 

And as the Master he had endured great pain in order to enact his plans. He could use the sweet promise of revenge and deviousness to smother his impatience to the point he could have rivalled any saint. 

But he could not _bear_ to wear khaki shorts any longer. 

It had gone on for too long, and now it filled his head every time he caught sight of his own reflection. A horrific taunting in the corner of his eye over every metal surface in the Doctor's junk-clobbered TARDIS. 

It takes him three hours to find the wardrobe even though he had set off before the usual round of early-morning alarms ring. The corridors seemed to keep shifting and twisting back on themselves. He had taken to muttering soft curses under his breath as he clomped up and down in his boots that were more fit for the Australian outback with its spiders and snakes, rather than the running they seemed to be doing an awful lot of. 

Eventually, he's allowed in, muttering all the while about broken circuitry and making threats about ripping out fistfuls of wires with his bare hands. 

He sheds the khakis immediately. 

Out go the socks and the hideously bland shirt. 

The boots fly into the corner and land with a satisfying thump. 

"Good riddance!" The Master hisses over his shoulder at the crumple of khakis. "If there was an incinerator within walking distance, I'd give you the death you deserve!" 

Then he sets to work digging out something far less offensive on the eyes. A purple velvet jacket catches his eye first and it all falls into place after that. A quick glance in the mirror brings him the satisfaction that he's been lacking ever since he's set foot inside the Doctor's TARDIS, invited or not. 

"What intricate, universe-burning designs have you got tucked away in that dashing outfit?" He asks his own reflection which promises much.

Finally, he gives himself a wink and saunters out. 

The corridors twist and turn and he's back with the others in the kitchen in mere minutes. Hovering over the cooker, Ryan and the Doctor crack as many eggs into the frying pan than it could possibly fit. With their backs turned, they can't pass comment on his new appearance, but it leaves the other two to comment on the change. 

_And now…_ he thinks, _they'll put it together._

Graham glances up from pouring milk into his cereal. “Nice threads, O!” 

“Yeah, you’re looking, like, all suave. Is that...velvet?” Yasmin stretches out a finger to touch his blazer before turning her attention back to the toaster popping. “Do you want me to stick on some more toast on for you? Or do you want to try their ten-egg omelette?” 

Briefly, the Doctor’s eyes land on him, and he holds his breath, waits to laugh in her face. But she only offers a grin over her shoulder that’s followed up by an approving thumbs up from Ryan, before they begin quibbling over whether they needed a bigger pan if they were going to do things right and flip the omelette. 

* * *

"That looks...interesting." Yasmin hovers behind him, looking at the screen that's covered in High Gallifreyan and noting that he has _no access beyond the firewall._

"It's a fascinating language." The Master murmurs under his breath. 'Not that I can understand a squiggle of it. Tourist-French is my limit, and that's about it."

She laughs, and so does he. 

"I came because me and Ryan are hanging out in the observatory. There's a meteor about to crash into the Red Spot on Jupiter and it’s going to turn it green for a bit. Not like, the whole planet, just the hurricane."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, you’re a storm chaser or something? I don't figure how that works at MI6 but...thought you might want to see."

It takes the Master a considerable amount of time to join the dots. "Storm chaser? I think you mean horizon-watcher...with my research in tracking the alien, the impossible, and the very, very improbable."

“Oh yeah.” Yasmin laughs again, "That would make more sense. You coming?" 

"A Green Spot on Jupiter...chances for that are probably one in seventeen hundred billion... and four."

"Really? I would have put it down for eighteen hundred billion." She hops down the stairs and he follows, happy to leave the infuriating console and its robust firewall behind. 

_Storm chaser? No, I've got the oncoming one right where I want her. Only a matter of time now._

* * *

"We need to get her back!" 

"That alien volcano thing's going to explode!"

"It's a goo-volcano right?" 

Even as Graham squints at the viewscreen, the Master thinks of three different ways to lure them closer to the doors where he could send them straight into space, four different ways of ejecting them through the roof of the swimming pool, and a face melting option in the rear engines that was particularly vicious and perhaps undeserved as Ryan had saved him the last of the gooseberry jam at breakfast that morning. 

"O?" Yasmin turns to look at him. "Come on, we need your brain here. Please, say you've got an idea!" 

"More than one. Just...refining," he announces while wringing his hands. 

And he's not lying, he's not. 

It's just _this_ wasn't what he had planned - he needed the Doctor to _know_ it was him. He wanted to see her face as he whipped out the rug, the ground, her TARDIS out from under her. Anything other than that, well, it wasn't going to scratch that itch. It wouldn’t be enough to win if he couldn’t rub it in her face.

A hand clamps down on his shoulder and gives him an enthusiastic shake. He glances to see Graham, face loaded with concern. "Come on, we're running out of time." 

The Master screws his eyes shut and thinks about ejecting himself from the TARDIS.

Then he opens his eyes, taking care not to roll them. "Alright, alright, Graham. Here we go. There's a big cable in that cupboard by the corridor. Drag it out here. Yasmin, you can hold this lever down for fifty-three seconds, and then flip all of those switches."

"And me?" 

"Ryan...get over here and see if you can spot the best trajectory of getting the TARDIS down there."

"Like...a flight path."

"Yeah, you're the video game legend in this TARDIS, right? Nothing too steep or too low. Don't want to get dragged into the...goo."

"Go team!" Graham says as he jogs off, and the Master nods along before the peppy comment actually registers and he can stop himself. 

* * *

He had counted, and counted again. Then he had headed to the swimming pool to do a final recount before his frustration got the better of him, and he stuck his head underwater to scream.

_Fifty-seven plans foiled without her even trying! Without her knowing! How could this happen?_

It was too much, and the TARDIS corridors unhelpfully deliver him back to the main console room before his hair and shirt has dried. Little drops of water plink to the floor as he makes his way across the room and plants his feet firmly, brimming with a white-hot anger that _their good friend and travel companion_ O has never displayed before. 

“I. Am. The Master.”

“Who?” Ryan asks, utterly confused before turning around to see him dripping wet. "Mate, do you need a towel?”

Beside him, Graham looks on sympathetically while he sips at his tea. “Did you fall into the swimming pool? I did that in my first week, happens to the best of us.”

“What kind of name is that anyway?” Yasmin snorts, "I don't get it. Master of what? Stylish blazers?"

The Doctor’s reaction is more understated.

With a grim look on her face, she stands slowly and walks around the console to face him. As she does, she puts herself in between him and her humans. _Here it comes,_ he thinks to himself, rocking on his heels. The Master feels like he’s untethered, finally free of the pretence that had him dragged about behind her for so long.

It's what he's been waiting for. 

Yasmin’s voice turns steady and low. “Doctor?”

Although she had been leaning against the rail, after the Doctor passed her, she too also stood to face him. They were like little iron filings spinning around their magnet, but this human, she was certainly the more astute of the bunch, able to sense that something was different. 

_Better late than never._

The glee within him surges higher when the Doctor replies with the words he’s wanted to hear for so long. Her eyes remain locked on him, and him alone. “The name of my oldest enemy.”

The Master almost swoons, sways on the spot. “I love to hear you say it. It’s music to my ears.” 

“ _Enemy_?” Ryan’s disbelief gains traction. 

But the look of disappointment on the Doctor’s face falls short of the anger he had been dreaming off, and that really, really, gets under his skin. “We’ve always been the better halves of each other, haven’t we, Doctor. You and me, on opposite sides for so long. Only it didn’t start off like that, did it?” 

“Oh.” The penny finally drops for Graham, and he chokes on a dunked custard cream, with the rest falling into the mug. 

“I guess that’s his _fake_ name. Don’t want to wear it out now.” Yasmin scoffs as she crosses her arms. 

Her eyes dart back and forth between him and the Doctor, and honestly, the Master feels deflated that they’re only a little horrified and confused now that the console room is filled with Yasmin’s low simmer of indignation more than anything else. 

The Doctor just stands there looking at him, as still as a Weeping Angel being watched. 

“Do I have to _explain_ myself?” The Master leans forwards tauntingly. “To you and your little humans?”

“I’d say so, yeah.” Ryan crosses his arms too, as all the iron filings continue to align. 

On the other side of the room, Graham had cleared his throat out, and the Master can hear the little cogs inside his head whirr as he silently determines whether he should mirror the action. _Three for three, predictable humans._ After a million nanoseconds, the human makes his decision and puts down his half-drunk tea on the floor. “We’re waiting.” 

Finally, the Doctor speaks, "You went through this entire charade. You've been here, in _my_ TARDIS, for weeks. Why?"

"Because I could." 

He spits it back into the silence that’s fallen between the five of them, only she breaks it immediately, laughing hard and loud. It’s a reaction he hadn’t been expecting, her bent over with her blonde hair flopping about. “Please! You could have left me in that goo-volcano.” 

He stalls at that. “What- How did you- No, you didn’t know. You didn’t say anything!”

The Doctor shakes her head dismissively, and it throws him completely. "No, it's more than that. I know you of old. In all your faces you always enjoyed standing against me, but your last one was different. _Missy_ , was different. We were friends."

Now it was his turn to frown. “We weren’t-”

“We were!”

There was no arguing with the resolute look on her face. "Fine. I'll admit, she had a soft spot for that grey-haired face of yours-" 

"No. You tell me the truth now." The Doctor marches down the ramp to jab him in the chest with a ferocity that almost has him backing away. _Almost._ "Now. It’s just us outside of Gallifrey’s temporal bubble. It’s not like the High Council are going to welcome you back with open arms, so...I’m listening.” 

He finally has her attention.

The rush of adrenaline makes his hearts beat in treble time. It's that heady, giddy feeling he's chased right across the universe and now she's finally seeing him for who he was not O, but as the Master. He savours the moment for what it is.

Now, she needed to know what he had done. 

"You are listening. That’s true. So listen to this, Doctor. Gallifrey’s High Council aren’t going to be welcoming anyone." His wink is laced with a hard edge, and her grimace transforms into a look of horror. 

The warning tone that slips into her voice is music to his ears. "What did you do?"

"What didn't I do? I gave them what they deserved.” He spins with the momentum of his confession. “I danced as the glass shattered and the planet _burned_ all over again."

"No, you can't have. Not after everything." She screws her eyes shut, fists at her sides, and he can see the line of her jaw tightening. 

_Come on, Doctor,_ he thinks desperately. _Ask me. Ask me!_

"But I did. Let me tell you." The Master throws back his head, revelling in the tramped down anger she’s holding onto. "It felt _good_. It was good. You should have been there! I bet you're wishing you were. I should have sent you a postcard."

But instead of raising her voice, she goes quiet, and all her attention falls on him, pinning him in place. "Why did you do it?"

"Does it matter?"

“Yeah. It does.” 

The Doctor stands resolute.

He wasn't expecting anything else, and finally he thinks that she might just burn with the same anger and rage that he’s been burning with. “I’ll do one better. I’ll show you. Unearth that final gift our home planet gave you, Doctor. Or rather, what it took from you.” 

* * *

They trudge back to the TARDIS together, the Doctor propped up between Ryan and Yasmin while Graham advances to the kitchen to brew a pot of tea and fish out a double pack of custard creams. When they help her into a chair, the Master crowds forward on his tip-toes, elbow propped up on the table.

"You see why now. They’re your own memories. They’re your own truth."

"Don't. Just don't."

She's tired out from the transference, although it didn't take long at all for the synapses to unfold right back and show her past. 

"I _had_ to.” 

The Master tries to bat away another thought, one that’s plagued him since he stumbled across the memories and experienced the torment for himself as the child regenerated over and over and the first Gallifreyan drew out what wasn’t theirs for the taking. But he can’t fend it off entirely. 

When she looks up at him and it spills out regardless, “It wasn’t right. What you did."

"It…" 

The Doctor pauses, and he knows the jumble of words trapped under her tongue because he had thought it too, in the brief seconds before he had acted and wrecked the whole planet- it _was_ home. 

But in the end, the timelines run the same and the inescapable weight of Gallifrey’s history would be inseparable to its fate. 

The Master leans closer, tries to search for the softer tone of voice that O had held. “If they’d done that to anyone else, any other child, would you have chosen something different? When the price was you, how would anyone else have acted?”

“Don’t use me as an excuse.”

“I’m not. I made my choice, just like they did.”

She stares back, “You’ve broken your usual rules by tagging along here. You haven’t even tried to steal my TARDIS yet.”

“Just because it hasn’t happened, doesn’t mean you think I’ve gone soft. Maybe I’m playing the long game.”

“Maybe.” The Doctor slides over the packet of custard creams. “Plates are on the top shelf, right hand side.”

* * *

"So, you kicked about through history causing messes just to get the Doctor's attention?" Graham asks, fresh mug of tea in hand. 

“Not that it worked much.” Ever quick to put in her two pence's worth, Yasmin’s sharp grin holds a new level of distrust, and the Master finds himself matching her stare, eyes burning as he forces himself not to blink first. 

Ryan, on the other hand, ticks off a handful of near-misses caused by the Master since he was invited on board. The tally takes over his fingers and then he pauses, "Wait...Australia and everything…was Vore was you?"

The Master thinks, blinks, and rolls his neck out. "I facilitated it more than anything. Most of it fell into place. Right place, right time." 

It's easier for him to explain it away and save face. _Rather not say how stupidly easy it was to run through fifty-seven plans._

"Big trouble in the timeline." The Doctor huffs over the other side of the console from where she's rooting around in the storage space. "I should have known right from the start. It is your calling card."

She had been there for the past twenty-three minutes while her human companions picked apart his brief stay aboard the TARDIS, despite the Master reminding them all he had been _invited_ in.

One vampire comment from Yasmin later and he was back to being irked again. So the Master just leans back against the wall and stretches out his legs lazily, knowing that they were all watching, waiting for him to parry back. 

He draws out the silence for a little longer than necessary, and then clears his throat with mock-guilt. "Yeah, about that...I wasn't sure when you'd turn up, so I may have been busier than you think."

"What-" The Doctor sticks her head out to glare at him. It was less of a question and more of a passing judgement. “What else was there?” 

He rolls his eyes, “Come on, do you think I’d give up all my secrets?” 

“If you want to stay on this ship, yeah, I think you will.” 

The Doctor lands back on her feet and strides up towards him, and behind her, Yasmin has a grin on her face. 

He can’t put his finger on what it means, but he does have enough sense to lean away. “What makes you think I want that? No, you can drop me off back at my own TARDIS, and I’ll be on my way.” 

She grins. 

And he’s not quick enough to clock _why_. 

“Yeah, right. As if I’d let you loose on the universe.” The Doctor scoffs as she bends down and yanks his sleeve up. Then she slaps something around it and her grin splits wider. “You can start by helping us fix your messes! And don’t even think about skipping out, because that lovely bracelet there has a deadlock on it that only I can break. You step outside the radius I set, and _zzzzzz!_ And it’ll resize if you regenerate so don’t think I haven’t thought of that.” 

Her smugness was sickening.

"No! No!" The Master claws at his arm, but the metal is flush against his skin and doesn’t budge. His stomach lurches with the implications. “No, you can’t be serious!” 

“It worked marvellously with a certain Margaret from Cardiff as part of her rehabilitation programme. I don’t see why it won’t work for you.” 

When she drags him up to his feet, he's already spluttering out a handful of incomplete threats that bounce right off the back of her head. On the other side of the console room, the three humans had banded together and were whispering between themselves. 

"Come on, wasn't this what you wanted?" The Doctor throws over her shoulder, tugging him forward, and then shoves the screen around to face him. 

"No."

"No? Ha! Like I said...we're cleaning up your messes first. So, coordinates for the first trap you set out, please and thank you."

"I can figure my way out of this." The Master reminds her, still trying to find some purchase against the metal bracelet. 

"Maybe. Eventually. But for now, you owe me. So, coordinates." She nods, considering it with some level of seriousness, although it feels patronising and there's nothing that he'd love more than to pull together a plot that'd wipe the floor with her.

He can't argue with her on that, and so he concedes. 

"Fine. You win this time around. Paris. 1945. Cybermen." 

"Cybermen?" Ryan asks hesitantly, and the other two look over at the Doctor. 

She winks, "Yeah they're not friendly and kind of a big threat if _someone's_ plonked them straight into a time event that's ninety percent fixed. But it'll be a piece of cake now we know who we're looking out for." 

He looks past her and smirks at the trio of humans. "Doctor, your level of overconfidence is _inspiring._ " 

"Anyway...get ready to hang onto something!" She announces as she swerves around the console and sets the TARDIS engines thrumming. 

There's a flurry of movement as the humans take their places and grip onto railings and the side of the console in preparation. With the coordinates set, the Master lets his mind drift towards new plans, or rather back towards old plans of stealing her TARDIS. The shock bracelet was only a temporary setback. No matter how effective it currently was, there'd be another opportunity in the near future. 

The time rotor grinds in an ear-splitting din. The noise mostly brings him back to the present and he idly leans over the closest panel to flip a lever. "Driving with the brakes on? You never did pass your flying test."

"Experience counts. Anyway, I don't remember you even signing up for pilot lessons." 

Her quip is flung back at him; it's not the same as before when he was her _good friend O_ , but it's also not with the hard bite that she had when they came back from the ruins of Gallifrey. 

There's been a reset of sorts, a line redrawn, like it had been with Missy. An expectation that he might step over in the space she's left for him, cross another threshold and stand on _her_ side of things. 

_Now there's a thought._

The Master flips a stabiliser switch to stop the grating noise just as she fine tunes the coordinates and with a final screech that's entirely _her_ fault, the TARDIS takes off, flung into the time vortex. 

Then he's too busy keeping himself from smacking into the console or floor to argue back about piloting skills but he finds himself laughing along with the rest of them, and if the whirling TARDIS shakes out a slightly more honest sound, well then that's just between him and his best enemy. 


End file.
